The Kansas City Chiefs franchise of American football’s elite NFL has moved to bolster its internationalization goals through a new partnership with sports marketing and media firm Playfly Sports.
Through this multi-year deal, Plyfly Sports will lead on sponsorship sales for the Chiefs in the UK and Ireland market, the team’s newest international market, leading on securing sponsorships with partners that have a “concerted presence” in the market.
This will focus on brands that can aid the Chiefs to engage new and existing fans in the market with “category-specific” activations.
Furthermore, Playfly will utilize its proprietary data and analytics tools to aid the Chiefs’ goals by examining market interest in the team and specific trends that may help it identify new markets to target for sponsorships.
Speaking on the deal, Playfly Sports commercial development director Adam Tuval commented: “The sponsorships we are focused on are about building meaningful connections between UK&I fans and the Chiefs brand.
"Our team is ready to pair Playfly's deep relationships across brands and agencies to deliver partnerships that resonate culturally and commercially, helping the Chiefs take another step toward becoming 'The World's Team'."
The Chiefs launched their presence in the UK and Ireland back in May after securing marketing rights to the territory through the league’s global markets program.
At the time, Chiefs executive vice president and chief marketing officer Lara Krug spoke to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport) about the partnerships the team may look to target, revealing: “I think when we look at the UK, we know that the league and many other clubs have been here for quite a while. I think our approach here is around making sure that we connect with the British fans, and then finding the right opportunities with partners that want to help grow our brand and the sport.
“I think that's something we've been talking a lot about, partners that may not be endemic to sport, but that really see this growth opportunity from an audience perspective. 57% of our fans are female.
"That certainly unlocks a whole new opportunity for brands who might want to be getting into this space, but [may] not have thought about sport in that traditional way. So I think we'll we'll certainly be open to many different conversations and taking the best of what's been working in some of the other countries.”
The Chiefs already boast market-specific partners in territories such as Germany and Mexico, where it also has marketing rights.
For Playfly's part, this partnership marks the firm's first sponsorship sales agreement outside of the US market, though the firm has a strong presence in the US, particularly in Major League Baseball, as of late.
